It's so refreshing to have a president whose administration sometimes produces good news below the radar. Earlier this week,

Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar and Secretary of Commerce Gary Locke announced that the two departments are revoking an eleventh-hour Bush administration rule that undermined Endangered Species Act protections. Their decision requires federal agencies to once again consult with federal wildlife experts at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration before taking any action that may affect threatened or endangered species.

The Sierra Club's Lay of the Land blog provides some background:

On its way out the door, the Bush administration bulldozed through rulemaking protocol and effectively eliminated Section 7 from the Act.  This is the section that mandates independent scientific review for any project proposed by a government agency.  By eliminating this section, the authority to determine how a project would effect an endangered species would be not in the hands of the expert biologists at US Fish and Wildlife or the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, but rather in the hands of those who are proposing the project.  So essentially the Department of Transportation would be able to determine if the highway that they really want to build would negatively impact any endangered species.

The Democratic-controlled Congress deserves some of the credit for restoring the Endangered Species Act, because the 2009 omnibus appropriations bill approved in February empowered Locke and Salazar to revoke the Bush administration's rule change. In a Republican Congress, that kind of provision never would have made it into the omnibus bill.

Add this to your "elections have consequences" file.

The Sierra Club is calling for comments to Salazar thanking him for restoring the Endangered Species Act and urging him to withdraw another last-minute Bush administration rule:

As you know, another harmful and controversial rule was finalized in January which sought to limit protections given to Polar Bears under the Endangered Species Act.  This rule, designed to ensure that oil and gas drilling offshore could proceed in the polar bear's fragile Arctic environment, limits the extent to which science and the full range of cumulative impacts to the polar bear and its habitat can even be considered.  

I hope that you will continue to value the role of science by also taking advantage of the opportunity to withdraw the controversial polar bear rule.

Click here to send an e-mail message to Salazar, which you can personalize if you like.

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In an incisive 2,500 word analysis, award-winning journalist and university professor Walter Brasch reviews eight years of Republican spin and propaganda, all wrapped up in a letter sent by the Republican National Committee.

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Rodger Schlickeisen, President of Defenders of Wildlife, sent out this appeal today to stop the Bush-Cheney administration from undermining the Endangered Species Act in the last days of their term of office.

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I want to make a plea for people of conscience to support a federal lawsuit by 12 prominent conservation groups to challenge the federal governments delisting of gray wolves from the Endangered Species Act. These groups need our financial support to succeed at this lawsuit and prevent the slaughter of hundreds of wolves this year alone.  See the end of this diary for links you can follow to make contributions that will help stop this slaughter.

Many of you may know already, but the Bush administration delisted the gray wolf from the endangered species status that had facilitated it's partial recovery from catastrophic population decline.

This decision leaves the fate of the wolves in the northern Rockies in the hands of myopic and irresponsible state agencies in Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming.  These state agencies are all but owned by wealthy incredibly influential hunting and ranching lobbies who could not care less about the fate of wolves, except to see to it that they are persecuted right back into near extinction.  This year alone the Idaho Fish and Game agency has agreed to allow 428 wolves to be killed, most by hunting.

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This is amazing news folks, this could really blow the lid off yet another part of Bush's mismanagement.

Link

The Center for Biological Diversity today filed a formal notice of intent to sue the Department of the Interior for political interference with 55 endangered species in 28 states. The notice initiates the largest substantive legal action in the 34-year history of the Endangered Species Act.

At stake in the suit is the illegal removal of one animal from the endangered species list, the refusal to place three animals on the list, proposals to remove or downgrade protection for seven animals, and the stripping of protection from 8.7 million acres of critical habitat for a long list of species from Washington State to Minnesota and Texas (see below for species and states affected).

"The Bush administration has tried to keep a lid on its growing endangered species scandal by scapegoating Julie MacDonald," said Suckling, "but the corruption goes much deeper than one disgraced bureaucrat. It reaches into the White House itself through the Office of Management and Budget. By attacking the problem systematically through this national lawsuit, we will expose just how thoroughly the distain for science and for wildlife pervades the Bush administration's endangered species program."

In many of the cases, government and university scientists carefully documented the editing of scientific documents, overruling of scientific experts, and falsification of economic analyses.

After years of "Healthy Skies" which increases air pollution, censoring scientists, scrubbing the Whitehouse website of all scientific information, denying global warming and in general being pushing a "faith based" approach to the environment. That is faith in the almighty dollar, people are finally taking legal actions to attack the Bush admin.

As this is a new development I will follow it as much as possible. Perhaps this is the law that Bush cannot get away with ignoring.

I will provide further updates when I can.

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